The other day my mom ended up with a bag of coffee beans but no grinder, as she—and the rest of my family—do not drink or even like coffee. This posed the dilemma of grinding the coffee beans at home without the proper tools. It turns out using a blender is the best way to solve this problem.

When the problem first arose, I asked for suggestions on Facebook. There were plenty, ranging from hammering a bag to using a mortar and pestle to slicing them up with a katana. Of all the suggestions, the ones that stood out as the simplest, easiest, and most practical were using a food processor or a blender. A food processor, however, generally has a plastic container and the coffee beans can scratch it up and cause other problems, but because most blenders are made of glass they don't have that issue.

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We wondered if there was a specific way to use the blender to grind the coffee beans, and it turns out there is. eHow suggests setting your blender on "Grind" if you have that setting, or using a speed of eight or nine if you do not and adding small amounts of beans gradually. Of course, you don't want to run the blender while the top is open. You just grind up a few until they get as fines as they're going to get, stop, add a few more, and repeat the process. This isn't a replacement for a proper coffee grinder, and you can often just go into a store with a coffee grinder and ask them to help you out, but if you have to do it at home (or would prefer to) this is a decent alternative.